Motorola Mobility again looks to shed space at Merchandise Mart

Motorola Mobility is shrinking its sprawling Merchandise Mart headquarters yet again in an effort that could leave the phone maker with less than half the space it moved into in 2014.

The company is seeking one or more tenants to sublease more than 100,000 square feet of its space in the River North building, spokeswoman Kathryn Hanley said.

That move comes about a year after Motorola Mobility said it planned to shed about one-third of its 604,000-square-foot space in the Mart. In late 2015 and early 2016, it struck deals with software firm VelocityEHS to take over 91,000 square feet of its space and for spirits maker Beam Suntory to take 112,803 square feet in a headquarters relocation from Deerfield.

This time around, Motorola Mobility is offering 113,260 square feet on the 17th floor, according to a listing on real estate data provider CoStar Group. If all of that space is subleased, the company would remain in about 287,000 of the 604,000 square feet it moved into in 2014.

Jones Lang LaSalle Executive Vice President Todd Mintz, one of the brokers representing the firm in the sublease, did not respond to requests for comment.

Motorola Mobility was owned by Google when it signed the deal to move its headquarters downtown from Libertyville, but Chinese firm Lenovo agreed to buy the phone unit in early 2014 as it prepared to move into the Mart space.

Like the previous decision to sublease some of its space, the new listing comes after Lenovo announced job cuts. On Sept. 27, Lenovo said it planned to eliminate 1,000 of Motorola Mobility's 55,000 worldwide workforce. It did not say how many of the cuts would be in Chicago.

Lenovo's confirmation of job cuts followed previous news this year that top phone engineer Iqbal Arshad and longtime executive Jim Wicks were leaving the company.

The 4.2-million-square-foot Mart is owned by New York-based Vornado Realty Trust, which recently refinanced the building with a new $675 million loan. The Mart's 3.6 million square feet of rentable space is almost fully leased, and Vornado in recent years has been replacing blocks of showrooms with office space that generates significantly higher rents.